Performance Objectives for Salmonella in fresh pork meat intended to be eaten cooked: How to derive them and verify their achievement Gerardo Manfreda a , Antonio Valero b , David Rodríguez-Lázaro c,d , Marta Hernández c , Frederique Pasquali a , Alessandra De Cesare a, ⁎ a Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences, Alma Mater Studiorum-University of Bologna, Via del Florio 2, 40064 Ozzano dell'Emilia, BO, Italy b Department of Food Science and Technology, University of Cordoba, Campus de Rabanales, Edificio Darwin, 14014 Córdoba, Spain c Instituto Tecnológico Agrario de Castilla y León, Carretera de Burgos km 119 s/n, 47071 Valladolid, Spain d Microbiology Section, Faculty of Sciences, University of Burgos, Plaza Misael Bauñuelos s/n, 9001 Burgos, Spain abstract article info Available online xxxx Keywords: Salmonella Pork cuts Sampling Performance objectives Risk management In our study we aimed at deriving performance objectives (POs) for Salmonella in fresh pork meat intended to be eaten cooked, using loin chop as a model. Moreover, sampling plans to verify the compliance of meat lots to such POs are presented. Ten lots of product, collected in the same slaughterhouse along a one-year period, were tested for Salmonella detection under four different storage stages through the product shelf life. The POs were consid- ered as different target values from Salmonella prevalence and were calculated at the 50th percentile of preva- lence distributions under each stage. Results obtained indicated that values increased between a minimum of 26.10% of positives after final storage at 14 °C to a maximum of 46.70% of positives after storage at retail. The number of samples to be tested in order to detect at least one positive and verify the compliance to the estimated POs ranged between five, for samples after storage at retail, and ten, for samples stored at 14 °C before the expi- ration date. For risk management purposes, percentiles different from the 50th can be selected in order to derive the POs as well as the number of samples to be tested in order to verify their fulfillment. Thus, the approach presented in this paper offers different options to risk managers for improving the decision-making process. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Pork is the most frequently consumed meat in the European Union (Devine, 2003). Management of hazards transmitted to humans by con- sumption of pork is therefore of major health and economic signifi- cance. Salmonella is one of the main biological hazards in pork products as it is an important zoonotic pathogen of economic and public health significance. In total, 95,548 confirmed human cases of Salmonel- losis were reported in 2011 in the EU plus Iceland and Norway (EFSA, 2013) and a statistically significant decreasing trend was observed over the period 2008–2011. It is assumed that the observed reduction in Salmonellosis cases is mainly a result of the successful Salmonella control programs in poultry populations. Many of the national monitoring programs for Salmonella in pig meat and products thereof are based on sampling at the slaughterhouse and meat-cutting plants. In 2011, 19 European Member states together with Iceland and Norway reported data on Salmonella in fresh pig meat from investigations with 25 or more samples. Overall, a total of 52,868 fresh pig meat units (single or batch) were tested within the EU and 0.7% of them were positive. Most of them corresponded to single carcass samples (81.4% of total units tested) with 0.6% of Salmonella positive carcass. Out of the 9858 batches investigated, 0.9% were positive for Salmonella. As regards single samples, most of them were carcass swabs and the area swabbed varied from 400 cm 2 to 1400 cm 2 . Al- though it would be expected that Member States (MSs) swabbing larger areas would be more likely to detect Salmonella, the highest proportion of positive carcass swabs was observed in an investigation in Germany where 400 cm 2 was sampled (4.0% of positive results). Spain reported testing of meat samples at the slaughterhouse with 7.5% of positive sam- ples (EFSA, 2013). The microbiological criteria, reported in the Regulation (EC) No 2073/ 2005 as food safety and hygienic criteria, define the acceptability of a product or a food lot placed on the market, based on the absence/presence or number of microorganisms and/or quantity of their toxins/metabolites, per unit(s) of mass, volume, area or lot. For Salmonella, that Regulation, amended by No 1441/2007, states that it must be absent in five sample units of 10 to 25 g of product, including different categories of meat prod- ucts, placed on the market during the shelf life. However, Regulation (EC) 178/2002 forced to drive food safety under science-based risk analysis (European Community, 2002). To make a risk-based approach of manag- ing food safety operational, Codex formulated risk-based metrics. Two of these metrics are Food Safety Objective (FSO) and Performance Objective (PO) (Codex Alimentarius Commission, 2004). The FSO is the maximum International Journal of Food Microbiology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 051 209 7853; fax: +39 051 209 7852. E-mail address: alessandra.decesare@unibo.it (A. De Cesare). FOOD-06541; No of Pages 5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2014.05.014 0168-1605/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Food Microbiology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijfoodmicro Please cite this article as: Manfreda, G., et al., Performance Objectives for Salmonella in fresh pork meat intended to be eaten cooked: How to derive them and verify their achievement, Int. J. Food Microbiol. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2014.05.014